Posts Tagged "Coal Production"

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reports that China has currently halted construction on new coal-fired power plants to avoid building over-capacity while simultaneously hoping to promote a cleaner energy mix. Xinhua News Agency reported that China halted...

During a conference call with industry analysts last week, rail carrier CSX’s new president said he thinks “fossil fuels are dead” and announced that the company will not buy any more locomotives for coal trains. Hunter Harrison stressed that he doesn’t...

The U.S. government has awarded $4.6 million in aid to the state of Montana to retrain hundreds of coal workers, many of whom will soon be out of jobs because of a partial closure of the coal-fired Colstrip power plant, the second biggest in the West. Despite efforts...

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is almost entirely out of coal, according to an update on its compliance with a 2015 law that compelled it and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System to divest from coal by July 1, 2017. Coal stocks were a...

“The only thing different between this year and previous years is that our political leaders, their lobbyist friends, and the billionaire coal tycoons are cutting safety regulations in order to make an additional dollar.”

– Gary Bentley, a former underground coal miner from Eastern Kentucky, writing about the rise in work-related coal mine deaths this year, even as the number of workers and mine output shrink. Nationally, there have already been more deaths in the first half of 2017 than in the entire previous year.

Events are bearing out forecasts that the coal industry will continue to decline in the United States, even if a minor bump in employment masks the overall trend. In the first quarter of this year, coal industry jobs declined by 1,266 workers, according to government...

The largest coal mining company in the world, Coal India, has announced plans to decommission 37 mines which are no longer economically viable in India. The government-run company, which accounts for over 80 percent of the India’s coal production, informed the Bombay...

The federal government gives at least $7 billion per year in handouts to fossil fuel production on public lands and offshore through a combination of direct subsidies, enforcement loopholes, lax royalty collection, stagnant lease rates and other advantages to the...

At least 46 coal-fired generating units at 25 power plants in 16 states will likely close, convert to natural gas, or be intentionally curtailed in 2017 and 2018 as the U.S. electricity sector moves increasingly away from coal and toward other sources of power....

“Even though we are in the foothills of coal country, it was not outrageous for us to look at energy efficiency and renewable energy as one of the pathways to helping this community transform.”

– Bobby Clark of Midwest Clean Energy Enterprise.Clark, on efforts to rebuild West Liberty, Kentucky with a master plan based on green buildings and renewable energy after much of it was destroyed by a tornado in 2012.

“When are we ever going to be economically free, not serfs to the coal industry, unless there is economic diversity?”

– Filmmaker Mari-Lynn Evans, whose documentary “Blood on the Mountain” explores the troubled history of West Virginia’s coal industry, as quoted in a story about the state’s efforts to revitalize its economy independent of coal.

In a detailed blog post, Power Past Coal lays out the factors contributing to the global collapse of coal starting with wildly inaccurate forecasts about China’s appetite for coal and how its slowing economy and increased focus on pollution and renewables asa a...

With many coal producers teetering on the brink of insolvency, Congress is considering legislation that will require the companies and the government to pay out healthcare benefits to retired coal miners. The provision to secure the United Mine Workers’...

The Colorado Legislature is considering a measure to proactively help coal industry workers transition to the new energy economy by using private capital and the bond market. “The Colorado Energy Impact Assistance Act” would create low-interest bonds that utilities...

The asset management arm of French insurance giant AXA has announced that it plans to pull out of companies that derive more than half of their revenue from coal-related activities. The move will affect about $192.72 million worth of investments. – via...

– Former Duke Energy CEO and Chairman Jim Rogers, speaking at the release of a new report calling coal’s decline one of the most “spectacular market collapses in equity history.” The combined market value of the four largest U.S. coal companies fell from $33 billion...

“The future for coal in the United States? There is no future.”

– Former Duke Energy CEO and Chairman Jim Rogers, speaking at the release of a new report calling coal’s decline one of the most “spectacular market collapses in equity history.” The combined market value of the four largest U.S. coal companies fell from $33 billion to $150 million in five short years.

“Responsible policymakers should be honest about what’s going on in the U.S. coal sector – including the causes of coal’s decline and unlikeliness of its resurgence – rather than offer false hope that the glory days can be revived.”

– From an analysis examining the prospects for a recovery of U.S. coal production and employment, which concludes that President Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations are unlikely to materially improve economic conditions in America’s coal communities.

An Eastern Kentucky coal mining company has unveiled plans to build what could become the state’s largest solar farm on a reclaimed mountaintop strip mine, promising jobs for displaced coal miners. The Berkeley Energy Group and EDF Renewable Energy are exploring...

“If you’d told me I’d be working in solar, I would’ve never believed you. I always thought I’d bounce from coal job to coal job until all the mines closed and I had to leave.”

– Former West Virginia coal miner Robert Atkins, who was retrained as a solar technician after being laid off from his coal job and now works as a crew chief overseeing installations for startup developer Solar Holler.

With Xcel Energy burning its last coal at a Colorado power plant, two major coal producers have lost a large customer. Xcel retired the unit its Valmont plant in Boulder, Colorado in March in response to a law requiring reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions. Most of...

A company that sought to develop a major coal mine 45 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska has suspended applications for state permits as of March 31. PacRim Coal’s proposed Chuitna Coal Project was first proposed in 2006 and faced strong local opposition over...

“No one’s looking for new coal reserves. The decline in coal demand has meant existing reserves will last a lot longer.’’

– Robert Godby, a professor of energy economics at the University of Wyoming, commenting on how the Trump administration’s rollback of a moratorium on federal coal leases may actually do little to help the coal industry recover.

Under a new sustainability strategy, the Port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands aims to stop handling coal by 2030. The port, Western Europe’s fourth largest, saw coal volumes fall 7.5 percent to 16 million tonnes last year and analysts expect a further 29 percent...

“It sounds really bold to say, but what we’re trying to do is to rebuild the Appalachian economy from the ground up. … We don’t get into the moral argument of coal being good or bad, we just talk about jobs and entrepreneurship.”

– Brandon Dennison, co-founder and CEO of Coalfield Development Corp, a nonprofit that offers out-of-work coal miners a chance to learn new skills, including solar installation.

The “comparative economics for coal, renewables and gas place clean coal firmly at the bottom of the stack in the U.S.”

– From a series of Citigroup reports to investors earlier this year in which the bank said it expects coal plant retirements of about 5 gigawatts in 2017 – enough to power roughly 3.4 million homes for a year.

Coal exports in the United States fell more than 18.5 percent last year from 2015 as the world continues to experience slow growth and supplier competition, according to the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Exports fell to 60.3 million tons in...